Many consumers today use their residential garages to store items that do not easily fit inside of a house. Such items include sporting equipment such as bicycles, kayaks, canoes, and rafts. These items are large and difficult to store effectively. Too many of these items can accumulate to the point where a car or truck cannot fit inside of the garage. Overhead storage systems are frequently used to solve this problem, taking advantage of ceiling space in a garage for storage. Such systems use a hoist to raise items to a sufficient height so the items do not interfere with people and vehicles on the ground level of the garage. The items remain at this elevated height until needed.
Many different racks and hangers have been developed to attach various items to a hoist in order to be lifted and stored as previously described. Many such racks have been developed specifically to store bicycles. Bicycle racks that accommodate a single bicycle are well known in the art. Bicycle racks that accommodate more than one bicycle present additional challenges. One such challenge is that a person may attach any number of bicycles to the rack which affects the balance of the rack. For example, a bicycle rack may be designed to accommodate four bicycles. In such a case, a person may attach one, two, three, or four bicycles to the rack, and each configuration has different requirements to keep the rack in balance.
Several methods have been developed to address these problems. One bike rack maintains balance with a varying number of attached bicycles by including a second hoist. The first and second hoists are attached to opposite ends of the bike rack and the rack remains in balance with the varying loads. Other inventions incorporate a similar solution without needing the additional hoist by attaching one hoist to at least two points on the bike rack like before. Using one hoist instead of two decreases the cost of the system, but the second attachment point on the rack requires a corresponding attachment point on the ceiling of the garage, which takes up more space.
In light of the foregoing, what is needed is a bicycle rack that is liftable by a single hoist that does not require attachment points at both ends of the rack that is able to accommodate various numbers of bicycles while maintaining balance.